Blood Law Firepower

Making Peace with the Concealed Carry: Not Comfortable, But…

It’s not that I didn’t like the holster… It just wasn’t, um, comfortable.

To be clear, I have never seen or heard anything to make me believe that concealed carry should be comfortable. If I wanted comfort, I could carry a few loose bullets in my pants pocket and throw them at an attacker. Concealed carry is about security. Discomfort is a price paid for tactical advantage.

But the first couple days, walking my dog for half mile stretches every night, the gun was the only thing I thought about. I wondered if anyone else could see that I was carrying a full sized pistol on my hip. I wondered if it would slip from the holster and fall to the concrete. And if it did, would it discharge? I wondered why it always felt like it was moving. Because it always felt like it was crawling up my side or preparing to swan dive to the aforementioned concrete.

That was then. After the first night I made some adjustments. Then I wore an undershirt. And then I just kept wearing it, even when it was upstairs and I was downstairs and I really didn’t feel like going to get it. It became an ongoing project.

It still doesn’t feel comfortable but it’s not a hardship either. Two nights ago I realized that I wasn’t thinking about it. I wasn’t tempted to check to see where it was or fidget with it. I had come to peace with it.

Next step: The belt. Sam says that a quality belt is major. I’m currently working with a Calco/ Gap Men’s combination. That isn’t what he was talking about.

You should know that a belt wasn’t anywhere on my list of firearms priorities. I wanted to get a shorter barrel for my Remington 870, and I wanted to get a new trigger and porting for my M&P. Neither of these things are likely to happen within the foreseeable future. Now they are incrementally less foreseeable.

What approach did you take to concealed carry? Did you begin carrying everyday, or did you test and experiment like I did with my nightly dog walks?